33,000 tonnes in Ísbjörninn’s first year

The last year was the first full year of operation for HB Grandi’s Ísbjörninn refrigerated store at its Nordurgardur site in Reykjavík. In total 33,000 tonnes of frozen products from the company’s freezer vessels and the Nordurgardur processing facility passed through Ísbjörninn over the year.

‘The freezer trawlers landed roughly 18,1000 tonnes here. Örfirisey RE landed 7,544 tonnes, Therney RE had 5,340 tonnes and we had 5,184 tonnes from Höfrungur III AK. The amount that we took from the Nordurgardur factory was around 15,000 tonnes,’ said Reynir Daníelsson, managing director of Landar ehf which handles all of HB Grandi’s stevedoring services in Reykjavík and Akranes.

He said that all of the processing plant’s products were last year stored at the Ísbjörninn cold store before being shipped out. There was no need to send anything to other coldstores such as Kuldaboli in Thorlákshöfn or at Sundafrost in the Sundahöfn freight terminal, as had been done in previous years. Additionally there is a great deal of rationalisation in being able to ship approximately 4,300 tonnes of frozen goods from the freezer vessels direct from Ísbjörninn into a reefers ship at the Reykjavík quayside. This volume is equivalent to 182 full containers, and subsequently eliminates 364 individual truck journeys passing through central Reykjavík over the course of last year.

‘Quality has also certainly improved with the advent of the Ísbjörninn store. Products spend less time waiting and are quickly transferred into refrigerated containers or into the cold store itself,’ Reynir Daníelsson said.